


Resume

by benignmilitancy



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:58:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benignmilitancy/pseuds/benignmilitancy
Summary: Apply within. [Drabble.]





	

_Resume_

______________

Chell chewed her pencap to a nub, deigning a glance at the scientist whose Bics gleamed like fine crystal in his pocket protector.

She knew it was a bad habit --- miracle half the barrel hadn't exploded in her mouth and bleached her teeth obsidian --- but one she'd long since kicked, now coming back after years of dormancy.

Her eyes slid like a locked trajectory with the scientist's steps. He was having trouble pacing the shallow stair that separated the hallway from the exit elevator, preferring to lean forward on the socket of his right hip. She thought of asking him if he wanted to sit down, get a glass of water, something like that. Not only did he seem like he needed it, but his shuffling was really beginning to distract her (accidentally ticked off her favorite element as oxygen instead of carbon --- not that whoever evaluated these things gave a rat's ass).

In the end, however, silence prevailed. Stubborn, enduring silence, rubbing painfully against leather on limestone.

_schhhkt-SCHHHKT-schhhhkt_

She flipped her last paper upside-down, shaking her head at his retreating back. Leave it to good old Aperture to make a hundred-and-fifty-year-old scientist proctor a simple resume.

_schhhhhhhhhhhkt_

A dark brow quirked in a round face.

Briefly they locked eyes, then broke contact. She looked at him, at his juxtaposition of raggedness and intellect, aware suddenly of her tank top and faded jeans, her brown arms the product of one summer too many spent away from college. The sand that had caked in the grooves of her three-year-old Reeboks had refused to leave no matter how thoroughly she scrubbed them. Hair yanked back in a ponytail, music note earrings punched through the lobe of each ear: she wasn't the picture of Science, but she was smart and she was nineteen, and like all too-smart nineteen-year-olds itching to bust the roost she needed money and she needed money _now_. Even if it meant jumping a few quantum hoops for some nosebleeds.

(Play it again, Sam.)

_SCHHHHHHHHKT_

She slumped forward, pen rolling across the tabletop, crumpling over the sections that made 10-40s look like _See Spot Run._

This place was batshit. She was sure of it. That was what clamped her teeth into the plastic. Not her bad habit but the scientists. The cheap linoleum. The frosted glass windows. The reek of solvent and ammonia stinging her nostrils. The rumors and lawsuits and utter sense of _stupid_ that smacked you the minute you walked through the front door.

No ... well, not stupid. Not entirely; her father worked here once, after all, and he still had a modicum of common sense (hard-won that modicum was). No, if she had to describe Aperture she'd probably say it was more like Disneyland on an acid trip, mixed in with some bad snow and thrown in a blender at high speed. Only the clinically insane could hope to keep pace.

Chell took one more glance at her paper. Question 217 of 2400 said: _How would you describe Aperture?_

_I made a potato burst out of the ceiling when I was ten,_ she wrote. _Let's get this over with._


End file.
